How to increase Adsense earnings by up to 5 times
Adsense is a Javascript delivered contextual advertising system that is open to any website owner. It analyses the content on the current web-page and delivers adverts specific to keywords found within the document; with the aim of increasing CTR (click through rates). However, getting Adsense to perform properly is an art in itself and there are many sites on the Internet offering advice on how to increase your earnings, yet few mention this key point.
Adsense pays out more on the higher up units you have
You're allowed up to (and including) 3 Adsense units on a single page and many webmasters/bloggers will use all 3. However, because they're all targetting the same keywords (from using the same algorithm to find contextual ads) then the units at the bottom of your page will pay out less per click than the ones at the top - purely because users pay more for the #1 spot, the ones at #10.
Let me explain using an example.
On the right you can see a sample layout of Website.com. They are using 3 Adsense units on the page; 2 on the right and 1 underneath the content. Now supposing unit #3 was getting the most clicks; the webmaster of this site will be scratching his head wondering why he's getting such rubbish amounts of money with so many clicks.The reason is that the #1 search term (the one that pays out the most) will be placed into the first unit on the page. That unit is on the top right. Unit 1 is likely to have 4 items in it, so that's the 4 top paying keywords out. Unit number 2 is likely to have another 4, so that's 8 of the top paying keywords down the list. Therefore by the time you reach the bottom unit (#3) you're on the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th highest paying keywords for your content so unless you're talking about lawyers or revolutionary pharmaceutical companies then you're CPC (cost per click) is going to be tiny.
Tiny CPC = Tiny Profit
Simple formula really. If you've built your website so that the most-clicked ad unit is not the first/only unit on the page then you're missing out.
How much difference it makes
I can't screenshot my Adsense, nor can I be specific about my current figures, but I can give you a very generalised idea. On this site I have two units - the one at the top of the page has an average page eCPM of more than 5x than that of the unit just above the comments.
To put that in very real terms, if received 4 clicks to the top unit - that would roughly equate to $2.50. 4 clicks to my bottom unit equates to around $0.50. Quite a big difference? Imagine if I had 400 clicks on each - not quite so small now is it?
So there you have it. If one of your Adsense units is getting significantly more clicks than the other one but is below it (in terms of page order); then you should seriously consider either moving the under-performing unit to somewhere underneath the good one, or remove it entirely. Doing this could mean that for every $1 you were earning, you'd now be making $5. I hope this helps.
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